Reverie: Christopher Wilmarth, Before and After Mallarmé

In 1978, sculptor Christopher Wilmarth was asked by poet Frederick Morgan to illustrate his translation of a group of seven poems by the French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. The resulting print series, known as Breath, is also connected to an elaborate group of works by Wilmarth—charcoal and pastel drawings, etchings, and wall sculptures—each titled after the first line of a Mallarmé poem. This exhibition is selected primarily from these paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints; it focuses on the way that Wilmarth worked in a variety of media to deal with the themes of Mallarmé’s poems and to shape his project. The exhibition also includes related works on loan from two private collections, providing a sense of how the Mallarmé project continued to inform Wilmarth’s sculpture in the years that followed.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.